by huehehue on 6/30/15, 4:00 PM
Surpised at how unusable the site is. The background video, parallax/scrolljacking, and dancing iPhones are really making my laptop choke.
It also seems like they're relying on the fact that people already know what the service does, as the copy isn't terribly informative either (at least at first glance). I hope the end product is worth it though.
by donut2d on 6/30/15, 4:55 PM
On OS X, clicking the "Start listening now >" link opens up iTunes and you get a dialog saying that iTunes 12.2 is required for Apple Music. Clicking the "Upgrade" button brings you to Apple's download iTunes web page which only has 12.1.X available.
Guess 12.2 will come out later today. Updating to OS X 10.10.4 did not come with it.
by bepotts on 6/30/15, 4:09 PM
It's a music streaming service that integrates downloaded songs into my iTunes library. That's all I needed to move away from Spotify. It'll be very difficult for Spotify to compete.
All the other features are nice add-ons.
by cmiles74 on 6/30/15, 5:29 PM
It's pretty sad that they took Beats, which ran in the browser, and have somehow turned it into yet another piece of functionality bloating up the nearly intolerable iTunes. Well done Apple, well done!
by LargeCompanies on 6/30/15, 6:18 PM
As a heavy Siri user in and out of the car I'm very impressed with the success rate of asking Siri to play x artist and song and her doing so 90 percent of the time.
I was a Spotify user, but the ability to bring up an artist and or any song via my voice makes for safer driving and I think it's pretty cool!
by ghshephard on 6/30/15, 4:48 PM
I'm confused what the difference is between "For You" and "New" - are they both just customized channels for me? Why are there two? I wonder if everyone gets the same "New" - I clicked on a ton of Pop Songs, Artists - and under New Music, one of the first recommendations was the explicit version of "Dreams Worth more than Money".
I'm guessing it's because I clicked on Drake.
Ballsy recommendation, regardless. Also, pretty good.
But - overall, the App's pretty fantastic. Every Song I've looked for by every artist is there. Great Integration with my (extensive) iTunes library. And Free for three months. I'm going to cost Apple a fortune (Well, $0.002 * a heckuva lot of plays) over the next three months.
But I'm still confused as to why there is a "New" and a "For You" tab.
[Edit - Seriously, everything seems to be here. All of Taylor's stuff of course, but AC/DC, you name it. I'm guessing there is very little that Spotify has that Apple Music doesn't. ]
[Edit 2 - Holy Crap offlining is easy. You just "Add to my Music, Make Offline - boom. Downloaded onto your iPhone. I've just dumped a bunch of live albums. I wonder what the limit is...]
by uncletaco on 6/30/15, 3:57 PM
The latest version of iTunes (12.2) doesn't seem to be available for 64-bit Windows. So no Apple Music for me.
by evanriley on 6/30/15, 5:41 PM
Well, contrary to the other comments in this thread. So far I've been enjoying it for about the hour I've had it on my phone. I enjoy the UI more than Spotify/Rdio (Although I only used Rdio for about a week.) It has artist I enjoy from Pharrell and Eminem to DJ Okawari and Major Lazer (although I guess they aren't as obscure anymore.) So far listening to Zane Lowe on their Radio channel has been entertaining. Do I think I'll leave my playlist from Spotify to come to Apple Music? Possibly, I have 3 months to figure that out, and currently I can't say I'm disappointed in the service?
Although I will say I'm hoping apple does more with the whole Music Connect and actually following artist that Spotify and other services currently don't, I'm going to hear about the new album regardless of whether or not I follow them on your service, update me with interviews they do, or if a concert is in my area, rather than just updating me whenever their album eventually hits your servers.
by spiralpolitik on 6/30/15, 6:30 PM
Surprisingly good start for Beats One, although the NYC host is a bit too saccharine for my tastes.
The question becomes can they maintain the quality? They definitely need to hire add more diverse DJs and expand the number of countries they broadcast from if they want to be the radio station of the world.
by lcswi on 6/30/15, 4:53 PM
How easy or hard is it to rip the music without transcoding? It's legal for me to do so.
by gdubs on 6/30/15, 5:35 PM
First thoughts are that I like the music presented to me post-launch. Will see over time how that holds up, but so far so good.
On-boarding was typically Apple. No frills, minimal signup screen. This is followed by the Beats-style bubble genre/artists selector. That screen was fun, but I was a little confused by the search icon in the nav-bar, which I thought would allow me to add bubbles, but seemed to just span out into something else entirely. I backed-out of it and just continued with the few bubbles I had selected.
Like I said, music quality and selection seems solid so far. The app feels rather big -- this may prove to be a plus or a minus, but at the moment leads me to want to explore it a bit, which is seems like a plus for a content app.
There are some new UI patterns I haven't seen in an Apple app before, particularly the minimize icon when you're in the song player -- which is a modal rather than push on the navigation controller.
by sidcool on 6/30/15, 4:15 PM
I am surprised, they have also released for Android.
by wahsd on 6/30/15, 5:27 PM
I find it rather peculiar that they highlighted iPod when there hasn't been any kind of update to any of the iPods in over three years and no substantial update in more than that.
by jbrooksuk on 6/30/15, 3:53 PM
I am, but at the same time, I'm also not surprised by Zane Lowe and the team's last minute checks that are still going on right now (Beats1).
by nefitty on 6/30/15, 5:33 PM
Sure, I'll abandon Spotify and all my created playlists, saved artists, favorited tracks and albums and all the playlists people have shared with me there from the past four years to try an almost exact similar service from you Apple. Not. The only thing they might remotely have going that's interesting is Beats Radio but you don't need a sub for that anyway...
by thesumofall on 6/30/15, 3:58 PM
Looks pretty nice and choose some decent music for me after having gone though the sign-up process. It's gonna be difficult for Spotify
by georgecalm on 6/30/15, 5:58 PM
FYI: Apple Music requires iTunes 12.2 and its download page currently says: "iTunes 12.2 is coming soon."
by yellowapple on 6/30/15, 6:38 PM
Pleasantly surprised that they're planning on releasing an Android client for this.
by untilHellbanned on 6/30/15, 4:39 PM
An interesting part is the sharing links at the bottom. I get that music is super social, I've just never seen Apple show other companies on their site. FB, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat. Not surprisingly...no Goog.
by kylnew on 6/30/15, 4:40 PM
I'm sold on Apple products relatively easily, but not so much on any of their services short of the Apple Care plans.
by Sephiroth87 on 6/30/15, 4:03 PM
Man, the music app is still broken as f...
by seivan on 6/30/15, 4:19 PM
Some i18n strings are missing, but apart from that, pretty good. Added my songs and I'm ready for a run.
by akie on 6/30/15, 3:53 PM
Nice site. And even though I understand why they stuffed it into iTunes, I disapprove nonetheless.
by ljk on 6/30/15, 4:46 PM
did anyone else notice the title of this hn thread change?
by tvvocold on 6/30/15, 3:56 PM
by pimlottc on 6/30/15, 4:30 PM
So the only people who can currently listen to Apple Music are iOS users running 8.4? Is that correct? That can't be many people.
by carbocation on 6/30/15, 4:21 PM
Has anyone enabled "iCloud Music Library"? I'm curious to try it, because it's required in order to save Apple Music songs for offline listening, but I'm hesitant because there seems to be insufficient description of the options to "merge" or "replace" the songs on my current device.